Diffusion of
Innovations
How does an idea become a shared practice?
Explore Rogers’s framework through adoption decisions, perceived attributes, communication networks and the difference between taking up an innovation and putting it to useful work.
In this chapter · Open the contents
- The central idea
- Four elements
- Five-stage decision process
- Five perceived attributes
- Five adopter categories
- Two curves, two measures
- Channels and social networks
- Decisions and change agents
- Critical mass and the Bass model
- Mashelkar’s ASSURED framework
- Case laboratory
- Contribution and limitations
- Watch with a purpose
- Check your understanding
- Apply and investigate
- Glossary and readings
Explain spread without assuming success.
- Identify the four elements and the five-stage innovation-decision process.
- Distinguish perceived attributes from adopter categories.
- Read cumulative and interval adoption curves correctly.
- Examine channels, opinion leadership, decision authority and critical mass.
- Apply ASSURED and design an inquiry into adoption, continued use and consequences.
A useful idea does not spread by its merits alone.
A college introduces a shared annotation tool for reading articles. A few teachers experiment immediately. Some colleagues wait for a trusted demonstration. Others cannot fit it into their courses or lack reliable access. Several create accounts but stop using them after a week.
The same tool enters different routines, relationships and resource conditions. To explain its spread, we need more than a list of features or a count of registrations.
Everett M. Rogers brought a wide range of diffusion research together in Diffusion of Innovations, first published in 1962. The fifth edition appeared in 2003. The tradition drew on earlier work, including rural sociology and research into agricultural adoption, and developed across many fields.
New to whom?
A practice can be familiar in one institution and new to another. Its status as an innovation depends on the perspective of the adopting person or decision-making unit, not only its invention date.
Innovation can concern a teaching method, an organisational procedure or a community practice as well as a device. Novelty does not establish usefulness, fairness or superiority.
Based on Dr. USP’s lecture and the supplied transcript, with scholarly clarification and original teaching material. College, community and AI cases are fictional. Curves and counts are explicitly illustrative, not observations or forecasts.
Define what is spreading, through whom and across which system.
Rogers’s four elements help specify a diffusion study. Return to the college annotation example and identify the boundaries of the process before explaining its success or failure.
| Element | What to specify | In the teaching example |
|---|---|---|
| Innovation | The idea, practice or object perceived as new by the adopting unit. | Using shared annotations as part of an article discussion, rather than merely owning an account. |
| Communication channels | Routes through which information and evaluations circulate. | A college announcement, demonstrations, colleague conversations and a support group. |
| Time | The relevant sequence, interval and adoption dates. | When teachers hear about the practice, decide, begin using it and continue or stop. |
| Social system | The connected people, organisations, norms and arrangements within the study. | The departments participating in the pilot and the rules and resources organising their teaching. |
The unit of adoption matters
A college may purchase a service before a department changes its teaching. A teacher may adopt a discussion method while students encounter it without choosing the platform. These are different units and decisions.
Do not mix an institution’s procurement date with a teacher’s first use and call both the same adoption event. Define the event and the population at risk of experiencing it.
Diffusion can be planned or spontaneous
Campaigns, demonstrations and organised support can influence spread. Ideas can also travel through informal communication without a centrally managed campaign. Rogers uses diffusion broadly enough to include both.
A study can examine the individual decision process at a micro level and the pattern of spread across a system at a macro level. A curve summarising the system does not, by itself, explain every individual decision.
From learning about an idea to reviewing a decision.
The innovation-decision process concerns a person or another decision-making unit. It is different from the classification of adopters by relative timing.
| Stage | What it concerns | A question about the annotation practice |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · Knowledge | Learning that an innovation exists and understanding something about its operation. | What is the practice, and how would a teacher use it? |
| 2 · Persuasion | Forming a favourable or unfavourable attitude towards it. | Does it seem useful, compatible and manageable? |
| 3 · Decision | Choosing to adopt or reject. | Will the teacher take up the practice for this course? |
| 4 · Implementation | Putting the innovation into use, potentially adapting it. | How is the activity actually conducted with students? |
| 5 · Confirmation | Seeking support for the decision and reconsidering it in the light of experience or new information. | Will use continue, change, stop or be reconsidered? |
Persuasion is not identical to a promotional campaign
Here, persuasion names attitude formation. A colleague’s account, a poor trial experience or a mismatch with the course may produce an unfavourable judgement. The theory does not require that every person become favourable.
Decision can include rejection
A teacher may reasonably reject a tool that adds work without helping the learning task. Rejection can later be reconsidered; adoption can later be discontinued. Do not present the process as a compulsory route to acceptance.
Trialability and implementation are different concepts
A limited trial may help inform a decision. Implementation concerns putting the innovation into use. Trialability is an attribute of an innovation: how far it can be experimented with on a limited basis. It is not a substitute name for the implementation stage.
The stages provide an analytical account. Real trajectories can involve revisiting decisions, incomplete information, organisational constraints and varied sequences. Reconstruct what happened instead of forcing every case into five clean steps.
Ask how the innovation looks from the adopter’s position.
The five attributes concern perceptions of an innovation. A designer’s claim that a system is simple is not evidence that its intended users find it simple.
| Attribute | Core question | What to investigate in the teaching case |
|---|---|---|
| Relative advantage | Is it perceived as better than the practice it would replace? | Does it improve discussion, save useful time or solve a recognised problem after costs are considered? |
| Compatibility | Does it fit needs, values and prior experience? | Can it work with course goals, language, assessment and students’ access conditions? |
| Complexity | How difficult does it seem to understand and use? | Which tasks create difficulty, and what support changes the experience? |
| Trialability | Can it be tested on a limited basis? | Can a teacher try one reading activity before committing a whole course? |
| Observability | Are its results visible to others? | Can colleagues inspect what changed in a discussion or learning task? |
Attributes can point in different directions
A practice may appear useful but difficult, easy to trial but poorly matched to assessment, or compatible but too costly to sustain. Compare the combination rather than assigning a single label such as “a good innovation.”
Greater perceived advantage, compatibility, trialability and observability generally offer reasons to expect faster adoption, while greater perceived complexity can create difficulty. These are relationships to investigate, not guarantees in every setting.
Visible results are not necessarily proven benefits
A colourful dashboard can make activity visible. It does not establish that students understand the material better. Define the desired outcome and collect evidence appropriate to it.
Likewise, a small improvement may matter where its costs are low or its consequences important. There is no universal minimum percentage of advantage that makes adoption worthwhile.
Relative timing is not a permanent personality.
Rogers’s familiar categories describe earlier and later adoption relative to other members of a specified system. Their conventional percentages come from an idealised normal-distribution classification.
| Category | Conventional share | Illustrative count |
|---|---|---|
| Innovators | 2.5% | 5 |
| Early adopters | 13.5% | 27 |
| Early majority | 34% | 68 |
| Late majority | 34% | 68 |
| Laggards | 16% | 32 |
The shares total 100%; the illustrative counts total 200. They are not measured percentages that every organisation or product must reproduce. When using real data, state who belongs to the population, when observation ends and how non-adopters are handled.
Read the familiar descriptions cautiously
Innovators are often described as venturesome; early adopters as respected; the early majority as deliberate; the late majority as sceptical; and laggards as more traditional. These descriptions summarise tendencies in the framework. They should not be used to diagnose a person from one decision.
Someone can adopt one practice early and another late. Limited funds, accessibility, unreliable infrastructure or a well-founded concern can explain delay. The historical term “laggard” is a category label, not a judgement of intelligence or moral worth.
Innovator is not the same role as change agent
An innovator is an early adopter in the timing classification. A change agent works to influence decisions in a direction sought by a change organisation. One person can occupy both positions, but the definitions differ.
An opinion leader is someone whose evaluations influence others in a relevant network. Opinion leadership can be informal and topic-specific; it cannot be read directly from an adopter category or a follower count.
The S-curve accumulates. The bell curve counts arrivals.
The shapes are often shown together, but they answer different questions. A cumulative curve asks how many have adopted by a point in time. A frequency curve asks how many new adoptions occur during each comparable interval.
The steep part indicates many new adoptions in a short interval. The flattening can reflect fewer remaining potential adopters under the illustration’s assumptions.
A declining frequency means fewer new arrivals. It does not mean that the cumulative number of people who ever adopted has fallen.
Original illustrative curves generated from a standard normal density and its cumulative distribution. They are conceptual teaching examples, not data, a fitted Bass model or a forecast. Real diffusion patterns can be asymmetric, interrupted or unlike either curve.
What can fall?
The number who have ever adopted cannot decline if each first adoption is counted once. The number currently using a service can decline when users discontinue. Specify whether your graph shows first adoption, active use or something else.
A curve does not identify a mechanism
An S-shape alone does not prove imitation, peer influence or campaign effectiveness. Funding changes, staggered eligibility, authority decisions and availability can also shape the timing of adoption.
A message can create awareness; a relationship can help interpret it.
Mass communication can introduce an innovation to a wide public. Interpersonal discussion can help people compare experiences, assess uncertainty and learn how a practice works. These are useful distinctions of emphasis, not exclusive assignments to particular stages.
A digital demonstration can combine wide reach, visible practice and questions from colleagues. A conversation can create first awareness. Examine the information exchanged rather than assuming that one channel always performs one function.
Trust is located in a network
A teacher who is trusted about research methods may not be influential about classroom technology. Ask who is consulted about the particular practice, how advice travels and whose experience is treated as relevant.
Homophily concerns similarity among people who communicate. It can help explain why experiences from apparently similar peers matter. But similarity can also create an alternative explanation for correlated adoption: people may make similar choices because they share conditions, not because one persuaded the other.
Tacit and codified knowledge
A written guide can describe how to create an annotation group. Watching a colleague manage a difficult discussion can reveal practical judgement that is harder to convey through instructions alone. Demonstrations and supported practice can complement codified guidance.
Peer influence needs evidence
Van den Bulte and Lilien’s reanalysis of a well-known diffusion study illustrates why shared marketing exposure can be confused with social contagion. The broader methodological lesson is to examine plausible confounds before attributing similar adoption times to interpersonal influence.
For a college study, record support, training, workload and access as well as network ties. A department-wide announcement and a shared deadline can affect everyone at once.
Who has a choice—and what support makes it usable?
| Type | Where the decision is located | Illustrative case |
|---|---|---|
| Optional | An individual or unit chooses independently of a collective decision. | A teacher voluntarily tries a reading practice in one course. |
| Collective | Members arrive at a decision together. | A department agrees through its decision process to use a shared submission method. |
| Authority | A relatively small number with relevant power makes the decision for others. | An institution requires use of a designated platform. |
These types affect what an adoption statistic means. A compulsory registration can happen quickly while actual practice changes slowly. A collective decision may produce agreement without ensuring resources for every participant.
Seven change-agent roles discussed in the lecture
- Develop recognition of a need. Begin with a problem participants identify, rather than manufacturing a demand.
- Establish an information-exchange relationship. Make questions and experience travel in both directions.
- Diagnose problems. Investigate the intended users’ conditions and difficulties.
- Develop an intention to change. Present relevant options, benefits, costs and uncertainties.
- Translate intention into action. Provide opportunities, access and practical support.
- Support continuation and review. Address difficulties and reassess whether continued use remains justified.
- Develop capacity for self-renewal. Help participants evaluate and manage practice without unnecessary dependence on the agent.
Incentives can change the visible outcome
A reward for opening an account can increase registrations without increasing meaningful use. A reward for publishing many annotations may increase quantity while leaving the quality of discussion unchanged.
Record what the incentive targets, who receives it, when it arrives and what consequences it may create. Distinguish informed adoption from compliance or a temporary response to a reward.
More adopters can change the conditions for the next adopter.
Some innovations depend strongly on participation by others. A discussion network becomes more useful when relevant colleagues are present and active. In such a case, an initial group may help make wider participation viable.
No universal tipping percentage
Critical mass concerns a level or configuration of participation sufficient to help sustain further spread in a particular setting. It is especially relevant to interdependent or interactive innovations. It is not automatically 16%, and it is not a requirement that takes the same form for every innovation.
The conventional 2.5% innovators plus 13.5% early adopters total 16%. That arithmetic does not establish a universal threshold at which diffusion must become self-sustaining.
A network effect concerns value depending on other participants. A bandwagon effect concerns choosing something partly because others have chosen it. They can coexist but are not the same explanation.
Research extension: Bass’s adoption model
Frank M. Bass’s 1969 model describes initial adoption using external and internal influence terms and a specified potential market. It is a mathematical modelling approach related to diffusion, not a replacement for Rogers’s wider account.
In its familiar interpretation, the external term captures influence independent of previous adoption, while the internal term varies with previous adopters. Do not assume that fitted terms directly measure “pure mass media” and “pure interpersonal communication.” Identifying actual channels requires additional evidence.
Nor are Bass’s model terms identical to Rogers’s innovator and early-adopter categories. One describes a model of adoption timing; the other classifies adopters by relative timing.
Spread is one question. Inclusive quality is another.
The lecture introduces R. A. Mashelkar’s ASSURED approach to inclusive innovation. It asks design and development questions that complement—but should not be attributed to—Rogers’s five perceived attributes.
| Letter | Dimension | A teaching question for a new learning service |
|---|---|---|
| A | Affordable | Can the intended participants obtain and continue using it without unacceptable cost? |
| S | Scalable | Can it extend beyond a small pilot while retaining support and quality? |
| S | Sustainable | Can its environmental, economic and social requirements be sustained? |
| U | Universal | Is it user-friendly across relevant differences in skills and access needs? |
| R | Rapid | Can development and access proceed promptly, while retaining necessary evaluation? |
| E | Excellent | Does it meet demanding standards of performance and service for all intended users? |
| D | Distinctive | Does it offer a meaningful difference rather than merely copying an existing option? |
These questions concern inclusive design ambitions. They do not guarantee adoption, and the framework is not presented here as a validated psychological scale or an automatic numerical index.
Keep the comparison precise
Rogers’s relative advantage asks how a potential adopter perceives a benefit over an alternative. ASSURED’s excellence asks about the quality ambition. An innovation can be perceived as attractive without being excellent, and can be technically impressive while remaining inaccessible.
Similarly, reducing the price may improve affordability while failing to solve language, access or support problems. Use the dimensions to locate decisions and evidence, not to award a slogan.
Follow adoption beyond the announcement.
Each fictional case applies the same questions: what is the adopting unit, which outcome is measured, what mechanism is proposed and what alternative explanation remains?
Case 1 · The teaching pilot with many accounts and little use
Scene: A college announces a shared annotation platform. Many teachers create accounts, but only a few conduct a reading activity with students.
- Define the outcome
- Registration, first classroom use and continued pedagogically useful practice are different events.
- Attributes
- Investigate perceived advantage, fit with teaching, difficulty, opportunities to try and visible results.
- Channels
- Compare what the announcement communicates with what colleagues learn through demonstrations and support.
- Alternative explanation
- Workload, connectivity, device access or an incompatible assessment calendar may explain limited use.
Stronger response: pilot a defined activity, provide access and support, and evaluate what improves before seeking wider adoption.
Case 2 · The neighbourhood discussion service
Scene: Residents try a service for exchanging information about local public works. Early participants stop posting because few people relevant to their questions are present.
- Interdependence
- The value of participation may depend on other relevant participants being active.
- Critical-mass question
- Which pattern of participation would support useful exchanges, and how would it be measured?
- Opinion leadership
- Identify trusted contributors through actual advice relationships rather than selecting only prominent accounts.
- Alternative explanation
- A confusing interface, weak moderation or unanswered questions may matter more than the number of members.
Stronger response: define a useful exchange and examine whether the required people, information and response arrangements are present.
Case 3 · The required AI feedback tool
Scene: An institution requires an AI tool for draft feedback. Enrolment rises rapidly, but teachers report substantial checking work and students vary in how they use the comments.
- Decision type
- The authority decision helps explain enrolment, without establishing voluntary acceptance or useful implementation.
- Relative advantage
- Include checking, correction, support and learning consequences rather than counting only the speed of generated feedback.
- Re-invention
- Teachers may adapt the workflow, restrict its role or combine it with peer and teacher feedback.
- Continuation
- Examine whether use persists when requirements or incentives change.
Stronger response: distinguish compliance, implementation quality and learning outcomes; allow documented experience to revise the adoption decision.
Do not make adoption itself the definition of success.
Spread as a communicative process.
- It connects perceptions, channels, relationships and time.
- It distinguishes individual decisions from system-level patterns.
- It makes peer evaluation, uncertainty and practical use visible.
- It helps locate barriers beyond a lack of awareness.
- It encourages attention to continuation and adaptation.
The interests behind the innovation.
- New does not necessarily mean beneficial or equitable.
- Non-adoption need not indicate ignorance or resistance.
- Timing categories should not become permanent personal labels.
- Resources, authority and institutional power can constrain choice.
- A rising curve does not identify a causal mechanism or prove public benefit.
Pro-innovation bias
A study can assume that an innovation should spread quickly and that slow adopters are the problem. Challenge that assumption. Ask whether the innovation addresses a real need, who bears its costs and whether the alternative remains better for some participants.
Re-invention and discontinuance
People can modify a practice during use. A teacher may adapt an activity to a local language or a community may change a procedure to fit its circumstances. Investigate whether the changes improve fit, undermine a necessary feature or do both in different respects.
Discontinuance also needs explanation. It may follow disappointment, replacement by another option, withdrawal of support or a change in need. It is not automatically a failure of communication.
Digital and AI adoption
For a rapidly changing service, record what version and practice were adopted. A purchase or a login may reveal little about the tasks being performed. Examine who can question the arrangement and whether benefits and burdens are distributed fairly.
Keep the process, attributes and categories on separate pages.
Watch Dr. USP’s Diffusion of Innovations: USP Lectures. Use three note headings: “decision process,” “perceived attributes” and “relative adoption timing.”
If the player is unavailable, open the lecture on YouTube ↗. Viewing cues follow the supplied transcript and are approximate; historical examples should be read in their original setting.
| Approximate cue | Listen for | Write one response |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00–07:45 | The definition, innovation, S-curve and adopter categories. | Distinguish the cumulative measure from new adoptions per period. |
| 07:45–15:35 | The decision process and five perceived attributes. | Classify knowledge, trialability and early adoption correctly as a stage, an attribute and a timing category. |
| 15:35–20:20 | Decision types, channels, incentives and micro/macro perspectives. | Explain why an account-opening incentive may not improve useful implementation. |
| 20:20–23:30 | ASSURED, inclusive design and the difference between adoption and use. | Compare one ASSURED dimension with one Rogers attribute. |
| 23:30–28:40 | Interpersonal influence, critical mass, tacit knowledge and change-agent roles. | State what evidence would support a peer-influence or critical-mass claim. |
Identify which part of the framework you are using.
Choose your answer before opening the explanation. These questions collect no responses and store no score.
01 In Rogers’s account, an innovation is:
Reveal answer and explanation
Answer: B. Perceived newness matters. An existing practice can be new to a person or organisation.
02 Which set contains the four elements of diffusion?
Reveal answer and explanation
Answer: D. The four elements define the diffusion process; the five-stage decision process is a different framework within the account.
03 Which statement about the decision stage is correct?
Reveal answer and explanation
Answer: A. A decision can favour or reject an innovation, and later experience or information can lead to reconsideration.
04 Trialability concerns:
Reveal answer and explanation
Answer: C. Trialability is a perceived attribute. It is not a substitute label for the implementation stage.
05 In the conventional classification, the early majority share is:
Reveal answer and explanation
Answer: B. The conventional shares are 2.5%, 13.5%, 34%, 34% and 16%. They are not a universal observed distribution.
06 A cumulative first-adoption curve flattens while new adoptions decline. This means:
Reveal answer and explanation
Answer: D. Cumulative first adoption and current active use are different measures. A declining frequency can coexist with a rising cumulative total.
07 Which distinction between an innovator and a change agent is accurate?
Reveal answer and explanation
Answer: A. A person can occupy both positions, but the concepts identify different things.
08 Why does 2.5% + 13.5% = 16% not establish a universal critical mass?
Reveal answer and explanation
Answer: C. Critical mass is contextual, especially where participation is interdependent. Its existence and level require evidence.
09 ASSURED belongs in this chapter as:
Reveal answer and explanation
Answer: B. The seven dimensions organise design aspirations and questions about inclusive innovation; they do not guarantee adoption.
10 A mandatory platform registers all staff in a week. The strongest immediate conclusion is:
Reveal answer and explanation
Answer: D. Specify the measured event and the decision context before inferring acceptance, use or benefit.
Build an adoption dossier that follows actual practice.
Activity 1 · Follow one innovation
Choose a teaching practice, organisational procedure or community service. Prepare a two-page dossier using a defined period and a clear unit of adoption.
- Specify the four elements. State what is new, the communication routes, the relevant time frame and the social system.
- Define the event. Is adoption a decision, first use or another documented commitment? Record continued use separately.
- Reconstruct decisions. Ask participants what they knew, how they evaluated the option and what happened during implementation and review.
- Examine the attributes. Compare perceptions with observed tasks, resources and constraints.
- Map relationships. Identify relevant advice ties and common exposure to training or promotion.
- Evaluate consequences. Include benefits, costs, adaptations, rejection and discontinuance.
| Measure | Possible record | Interpretive limit |
|---|---|---|
| Awareness | A participant can identify the practice. | Recognition does not establish favourable evaluation. |
| Adoption decision | A dated decision or documented commitment. | The decision does not demonstrate competent implementation. |
| First use | A recorded activity meeting a defined criterion. | A single use does not establish continuation or benefit. |
| Continued use | Repeated, defined activity over a specified period. | Frequency alone does not establish quality. |
| Outcome | Evidence relevant to the intended task, such as an assessed learning activity. | A causal claim needs a suitable design and rival explanations. |
Activity 2 · Diagnose the barrier before designing the message
Suppose teachers know about the practice but few use it. Develop competing explanations: weak perceived advantage, incompatibility, complexity, limited resources or lack of relevant peer support. State what observation would distinguish each explanation.
Then propose one response directed at a supported barrier. More publicity may help with awareness; it cannot, by itself, provide a device, change an assessment rule or make an unsuitable practice useful.
Research extension · Are colleagues influencing adoption?
Question: does prior adoption among relevant advice contacts predict a teacher’s later adoption, after accounting for shared conditions?
Possible design: follow a defined group over time, collect dated adoption events and ethically obtained advice-network information, and record training, role, access, workload and policy changes.
Analysis: preserve temporal order. Distinguish a contact’s adoption before a decision from the contact’s adoption afterwards. Examine common exposure and similarity as alternative explanations.
Interpretation: a network association can support a prediction. A stronger claim of interpersonal causation needs additional design and process evidence. Do not infer an influence pathway merely from an S-curve or centrality score.
Inclusion: investigate who has no relevant contacts, whose accounts are missing and who lacked an opportunity to try. Non-adoption can reveal a design or access problem rather than a deficit in the person.
Use voluntary participation, minimise identifying network information in teaching outputs and explain the limits of the data collected.
Examination and discussion prompts
- Short answer: distinguish an adopter category, a perceived attribute and a decision-process stage.
- Application: explain why a technically strong innovation might spread slowly.
- Comparative essay: compare Rogers’s five attributes with Mashelkar’s ASSURED aspirations.
- Critical discussion: when can non-adoption or discontinuance be a reasoned outcome rather than a diffusion failure?
Keep spread, use and value in the same inquiry.
- Diffusion
- The communication and spread of a perceived innovation through channels, over time, within a social system.
- Innovation
- An idea, practice or object perceived as new by the adopting unit.
- Adoption
- A decision to make use of an innovation; empirical studies must state the event used to identify it.
- Implementation
- Putting the innovation into practice.
- Confirmation
- Reviewing or reinforcing a decision, potentially including reversal.
- Re-invention
- Modification of an innovation by users during adoption or implementation.
- Discontinuance
- Ending use after adoption, whether through disappointment, replacement or changed circumstances.
- Opinion leader
- A person whose evaluations influence others in a relevant domain or network.
- Change agent
- A person who seeks to influence innovation decisions towards objectives pursued by a change organisation.
- Homophily
- Similarity among people who communicate or form ties.
- Critical mass
- A context-dependent level or configuration of participation that helps sustain further activity or spread.
- Cumulative adoption
- The total who have adopted by each point in time under a stated counting rule.
- Adoption frequency
- New adoption events within comparable intervals.
- Pro-innovation bias
- The assumption that adoption and faster spread are desirable without examining the innovation or its consequences.
Core and further readings
The lecture draws primarily on Rogers and adds Mashelkar’s framework. Bass and the empirical research reading extend selected questions. Publisher pages can show later printings; the dates below identify the cited works.
- Rogers, E. M. (2003). Diffusion of innovations (5th ed.). Free Press. Official publisher record and excerpt ↗
Read the four elements, decision process, attributes, categories, social networks and consequences together.
- Mashelkar, R. A. (2018). 2018 K. R. Narayanan Oration: Dismantling inequality through ASSURED innovation. Author’s text ↗ · Author’s explanation of the seven dimensions ↗
Use for inclusive design aspirations, keeping these distinct from Rogers’s adoption framework.
- Bass, F. M. (1969). A new product growth for model consumer durables. Management Science, 15(5), 215–227. Original article DOI ↗
Consult the original mathematical model and its assumptions. The title is given as printed by the journal.
- Van den Bulte, C., & Lilien, G. L. (2001). Medical innovation revisited: Social contagion versus marketing effort. American Journal of Sociology, 106(5), 1409–1435. Article DOI ↗ · Author-hosted paper ↗
Read as a methodological example of examining common exposure and other confounds before attributing adoption to social influence.
- Dr. USP. (2021, February 9). Diffusion of innovations: USP lectures [Video]. YouTube. Watch the lecture ↗
Use with this chapter’s viewing guide, illustrative curves and adoption dossier.
The chapter in six statements
- Diffusion concerns a perceived innovation, channels, time and a social system.
- Decision stages, perceived attributes and adopter categories answer different questions.
- The S-curve is cumulative; the bell curve concerns new adoptions over time.
- Relationships, resources and authority influence what adoption and use can mean.
- Critical mass is contextual, and ASSURED adds a distinct set of inclusive-design aspirations.
- Success requires examining use and consequences, not simply counting adopters.
Follow the idea through influence, learning and technological change.
Two-Step Flow Theory helps examine personal influence and opinion leadership. Social Cognitive Theory opens questions about learning through observation and experience. The Seven Traditions of Communication Theory places these explanations within a wider map of the field.
Choose one new practice and ask: what would explain its spread—and what would establish that it was worth sustaining?
Back to the chapter opening ↑